Hawzah News Agency ­– The Qur’an, the Eternal Miracle

History clearly shows that the Prophet of Islam performed diverse miracles in the course of his mission. But he laid stress above all else upon that miracle which is eternal, the Holy Qur’an itself. He declared his prophecy by means of the revealed Book and challenged anyone in the world to produce the like of it; but nobody at the time of the Revelation could respond to the challenge. Even to this day, after the passage of centuries, the Qur’an’s inimitable uniqueness remains; as it says in the Book:

Say: Though mankind and the jinn should assemble to produce the like of this Qur’an, they could not produce the like thereof, even if they were to help one another. (Sura Bani Israil, XVII:88)

Here, the Qur’an is saying, in effect, with regard to its own uniqueness: ‘O Prophet, challenge the people to bring a book like this one’. Elsewhere, it challenges them to bring even less:

Say: Then bring ten sïras the like thereof, invented ... (Sura Hud, XI:13)

...then produce a sïra the like thereof ... (Sura al-Baqara, II:23)

We know that the enemies of Islam have not spared any effort in their attempts, over the course of fourteen centuries, to harm Islam; they have not ceased accusing the Prophet of being a magician, a madman and other such things; but they have never been able to take up the challenge of producing anything comparable to the Qur’an. Today, despite all the different fields of contemporary thought and learning, and all the modern epistemological tools at their disposal, they are unable to refute or confound the limpid, inimitable uniqueness of the Qur’an; this, alone, bears witness to the fact that the Qur’an is something utterly beyond the speech of a human being.

Reference:

Ayatollah Jafar Sobhani, Doctrines of Shii Islam, A Compendium of Imami Beliefs and Practices, Translated and Edited by Reza Shah-Kazemi, published by I.B.Tauris Publishers, london • new york  2003.